This is the first season of the Premier League without SAF on the sidelines pointing at his watch. Wierd.

Lots of people in this summer for Norwich and Holt has gone. He's hopeing RvW is almost as good as RvP. Plus i put a sneeky £1 on Norwich topping the table after the first round of matches. Come on you yellows.

Langston:Been waiting for this for months. And a happy goodbye to you, Saturday productivity.

For me, it's "hello, insomnia!" Up at 4am and won't step away from the TV for at least the next 12 hours, all for football reasons (OK, the last 3 hours will be due to the other football, but it counts in my book).

/Had to hit backspace about 40 times typing this post//I'll get worse before I get better

See the Talksports pages for help on making predictions. It is pretty simple. Predict scores for each match. There will be a variable number of matches in a round, but typically it will be 9-11 games. Occasionally, a team might appear twice [e.g. Saturday/Wednesday] or not at all.

After making your predictions, you may assign your Banker chip and your insurance chip. The Insurance protects you from negative points for that game, and the Banker chip multiplies the points from that game - whether positive or negative!

Click submit and you are good to go. You can adjust your predictions at any time up until kick-off at which point they are locked in, but games kicking off later/next day are still changeable.

We'll take scores from the 2nd round of games commencing 24th August. If you miss this deadline don't worry, you won't be far behind the leaders. If you enter predictions for round 1 - no problem, the mini-leagues differentiate between scores from global and mini-league performance so you will neither have an advantage nor be penalised.

Your scores for each round are automatically calculated sometime after each set of games - we've seen anything from 10 minutes to 8 hours. Those scores will be added [or subtracted] to your running total by the system and thereby used to calculate your global [everyone in the world] and mini-league rankings.

Be advised that when a round is in progress, you will have some access to the predictions of others in the mini-league and complete access to their performance after the round is over.

Banter occurs. You will encounter triumph and disaster and must treat those two imposters just the same. There will be a short report each week.

Tactical notes:

1.1.Make your predictions! This is the single most important thing. If you don't, the system may very well make automatic predictions for you. The system allows you to make predictions WAY ahead of schedule - so if you think you might miss a week, or it's a period when there are multiple rounds in a short space of time [e.g. Christmas, Easter] then you can enter scores weeks and even months in advance. If you think you will only be popping by occasionally, you could enter a few weeks at a time.

2.2.Always place your Insurance chip! It can't harm you points wise and may save a significant negative score.

3.3.Relative scores matter more than absolute scores! Some weeks you'll score 200 and be average, others you'll score 20 and beat everyone else. The scoring system makes low and negative scores very easy to achieve.

4.4.It is very possible to have runs of good and bad form. If the latter happens to you in the first couple of weeks and you are way behind, don't worry - this is a marathon and not a sprint. You'll learn and improve quickly.

5.5.Be careful with your Banker chip! It doubles or triples the points for that game, meaning you could score +90 [30x3] plus any Banker Bonus for a perfect prediction down to -30 [-10x3]. That is quite a swing. Opinions differ on optimum Banker chip strategy. A certain proportion of the cohort sometimes like to cover the same game with the Banker and Insurance chip simultaneously, meaning that the big penalty is avoided [min=0] and a potential big [eg a x3 rather than a x2] score can be selected with some security. I do not agree with this strategy. I have two reasons:

a.The bonus for consecutive accurate predictions [up to +20] is ALSO being risked when the Banker chip is in play, even if the Insurance is covering. The potential value of that cumulative bonus can be quite considerable. But more importantly;

b.A Gentleman doesn't play that way.

6. 6.If the above made your eyes glaze over, here is my strategy. Place your Banker only on a result you are the most sure of in a set or not at all.

Is anyone with DirecTV having trouble loging in to the NBC streaming? I'm at my parents so I can watch on TV, but once I go back to school I want to be able to log in to watch. I enter the correct info, but it sends me back to the log in screen. I don't have cable at my apartment so I can't use my xfinity log-in.